Spaceman Entering House

I’ve been staring at this art off and on for weeks, but just recently I finally decided that the plants were evil sentient spine-sucking space ferns, and the rest of the strip spawned from that.

In my mind, this somehow takes place in Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles” universe. I’ve never read a more scathing fictional future account of idiot humans on an alien planet, and this guy just seems like he’d fit right in.

…And I’m apparently on a “mentioning sci-fi writers in the commentary” kick. Neat. Tune in Friday for a fart joke inspired by Asimov’s “Foundation” series.

Of course, psychohistory cannot predict a single fart by a single man, any more than it can predict a single pratfall. Instead, it forecasts the collective flatulence of quadrillions of humans scattered across untold millions of legume- and cabbage-consuming worlds…
– excerpt from the Encyclopedia Galactica, 116th Ed.

Even if the hapless human is only 1.5 meters tall, it would seem that he would need to walk 3, 4, or even 5 meters to be able to get a good look through the glass. Of course, to a mutant space fern, a “meter” might be equivalent to “the distance from one’s spine-sucking rootlet to one’s spine-sucking sporophyte.”

Randy – I say the door’s just over 2 meters tall, and if he walks 2 meters directly to his right, he’ll get a pretty good look in the window.

Actually, I originally had “three yards” here, but I figured a superior race, Fernish or otherwise, would use the dad-blamed metric system. And by this point I’d already drawn the speech balloons, so in order to preserve the formatting, I had to use a number that took up fewer characters. Hence, “two meters.”

Breccia – I thought my days of creating things that ended up on refrigerators were over when I graduated junior high, but little did I know my time would come again! Thanks muchly for the fridge-love and the kind words!

MZ – That comment’s going on MY fridge if I can find room between my son’s various stick figure portraits!

Y’know, I had started with a line about General Bel Riose’s legendary “silent but deadly” offensive fleet strategies – but that lacked a certain… fridge-worthiness. So, I’m glad I took the high road on this one.

Regarding the unit of length, maybe the Fernians (Fernites? Fernaars?) should be measuring in smoots. “Two smoots” would fit the speech balloon and the picture.